As the United States embraces a plan to get rid of all chemical weapons in Syria, the Syrian rebels are reorganizing themselves into Islamic coalitions that are independent of the US-backed Syrian National Coalition and are in opposition to an ascendant al-Qaeda. This reorganization represents a significant loss of US influence among the rebels, their willingness to adopt a hard-core Islamist character, and the probability of internal fighting between al-Qaeda and the other Sunni rebels in Syria.

Syria’s political reality is changing from a unified state into a fragmented series of regions. A Sunni enclave is developing in the north and east, a regime controlled area in the west and south, and a Kurdish autonomous area in the northeast. Kurdish autonomy will help bolster Turkish influence in the region while a US-led strike against the regime will only solidify the Balkanizing process in Syria.

Praemon is proud to release this, the first Annual Threat Report. In addition to each student contributor’s regular pieces on varying national security issues, the Annual Threat Report (ATR) is a large-scale, collaborative analysis project. The purpose of the ATR is to identify the handful of threats that we, the members of Praemon, consider to […]

On October 25, 2012, The New York Times published an eye-opening report on an extensive, billion-dollar business empire constructed by relatives of China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao. Three months later, the Times revealed it had been undergoing intense cyber attacks even before the report was publicly released. Cooperating with AT&T, the FBI, and a leading […]